Go green for a taste of Naples at Amico Bio

Thursday 29 April 2010 09:54 BST

Root and branch: chef Pasquale Amico is using fresh organic produce brought in from his family’s farm near Naples

Pasquale Amico and two of his cousins, Enrico and Bruno, want you to enjoy fresh produce trucked in from their organic farm nears Naples. To this end Pasquale, who to my knowledge has worked as chef for Giorgio Locatelli at Refettorio, at Sartoria and Via Condotti, has taken over what was previously Betjeman’s Wine Bar but before that the house where self-styled "poet and hack" Sir John Betjeman lived and worked.

Cloth Fair, originally within the precincts of the priory of St Bartholomew-the-Great, was where medieval merchants would trade fabrics during Bartholomew Fair until, in 1885, the City authorities suppressed the bazaar for encouraging debauchery and public disorder. The little alley still hums with a sense of history and is one of those charming geographical discoveries in which London abounds. I long to buy the early 17th-century house, a rare survivor of the Fire of London, next door to Amico Bio, which according to the internet is currently for sale.

Presumably to give Italian leaves and vegetables the starring roles in the menu, Pasquale has decided to make cheese, tofu and seitan (wheat gluten) the sources of protein and specify cheeses where plant enzymes have been used for coagulation. Amico Bio is effectively a lacto-vegetarian restaurant, or as the couple next to us described themselves, for "people who don’t want to eat too much meat".

The premises have a homely air emphasised by a fireplace and cupboards full of stores such as tinned tomatoes and dried pasta. On the mantelpiece are copies of Healthy magazine and a publication that might be of interest to Have I Got News For You — BEET IT, the journal of "the juice with stamina".

Last Wednesday a delightful waitress was running the floor. We started dinner with homemade focaccia served with Gaeta olives and extra virgin olive oil plus chargrilled asparagus, presented under a heap of rocket and slices of grana Padano cheese, and also chargrilled oyster mushrooms flavoured with garlic and lemon. With no huge margins for error, the dishes were fine; chargrilling added interest to the vegetables. A pasta dish of mafaldine featured undercooked tough pasta and a scant amount of the sautéed turnip top garnish. Suddenly the arduous face of vegetarianism presented itself, which a dish of roasted seitan with carrots and kohlrabi did nothing to ameliorate. Seitan is best left to the Chinese who, in the traditions of Buddhist cooking, can assemble an agreeable mock duck.

Frittata of artichoke was not the anticipated sunny flat omelette but a sort of beige envelope. By far the best item among the main courses tried was a side dish of zucchine fritte, crisp and light. Indeed, a main course assembled from side dishes all at £2.50 — say, fried zucchini, green salad, roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary, fennel gratin and broccoli — would be a sage way to handle the second course.

Balsamic vinegar does coax something extra from strawberries, especially organic ones, and the Neapolitan Easter cake pastiera di grano also came into the category of sweet reward for gastronomic virtue. I think Pasquale should slip a fillet of fish, veal escalope and chicken al mattone (cooked under a brick) onto the menu. We could still appreciate and laud his cousins’ vegetables. And avoid the devil’s work that is seitan.